China rolls out first one-jab Covid vaccine
Follow UsStory highlights
The vaccine is being touted as a rival to Johnson and Johnson's one-jab shot cleared by the US drug regulator.
China has given conditional approval for a single dose Covid vaccine. Beijing's first Ad5-nCoV COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out on Friday, the state-run Global Times reported on Sunday.
The vaccine is being touted as a rival to Johnson and Johnson's one-jab shot cleared by the US drug regulator.
It is the only single-dose Covid vaccine that has been given conditional approval to be rolled out in China. People can get desirable protective effect after 14 days of inoculation.
The protective effect can last at least six months after a single-dose inoculation and it can increase immune response by 10 to 20 times if the second dose is taken half a year after the first one, the report said.
With this, China's medical products regulator has approved five coronavirus vaccines which include Sinovac, Sinopharm, CanSinoBio and another by Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.
One of the developers of the Ad5-nCoV vaccine said that the annual production capacity can reach 500 million doses, which means 500 million people can be vaccinated in a year.
Phase-I clinical trials of the vaccine started on March 16, 2020, making it the world's first COVID-19 candidate vaccine that entered clinical trials, the Global Times report said.
Though China has been supplying its vaccines to different countries, none of them have been approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The Ad5-nCoV vaccine is a recombinant adenovirus vector vaccine jointly developed by CanSino Biologics and researchers from the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences led by Chen Wei, who is an infectious disease expert and a researcher at the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences.
Also, the US Food and Drug Administration on Saturday approved Johnson and Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, the third jab to be authorised to fight the pandemic that has claimed over half a million lives in the country.
The vaccine is set to be a cost-effective alternative to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and can be stored in a refrigerator instead of a freezer.
(with inputs)